Why are time and attendance solutions necessary?
Sophisticated time and attendance solutions keep track of employee hours worked, compensation and time off. They play a crucial role in the business, and for your team alike. Good T&A tracking simplifies payroll at the end of each month and ensures that there are no policy and regulatory violations. Excellent time management solutions contain clocking in and clocking out time, leave management, payroll and reporting. More sophisticated solutions include biometrics, missed alerts and calendars, as well as, analytics so that the business can convert the data to information and then leverage the data, to make sound business decisions.
Ultimately, a good time and attendance management system delivers workforce intelligence putting your organisation in the driver’s seat.
The consequences of an outdated time and attendance solution
No business that is serious about competing effectively and thriving should use manual time and attendance management systems. Manual systems are associated with significant risk and inefficiencies. In more severe circumstances, they can become a financial liability.
Human error
When it comes to manual errors, machines and technology can identify errors better than humans, especially for tasks such as adding, subtracting or calculating hours on a timesheet. The bigger your business grows, the more colleagues you will have, the bigger the risk of human error if you run a manual system. Pertinent to note that most of your team resent filling in timesheets and very seldom fill them to a high degree of accuracy. The time and effort required to fill in timesheets add up to significant unproductive time in the long run. If you take into account the errors based on unreliable timesheets, the impact it has on productivity is immense.
Time spent on menial, non-work-related tasks increase
Timesheets distract your management from your business goals. The time that your managers should spend on moving the business forward, they end up spending on looking at retrospective timesheets.
Wasted resources
Some small business owners think the upfront cost of automated time and attendance systems is too high to carry. They feel that old card machines, pens and paper will do the trick. The difference between the two points of view is that you pay for an automated system once. With the other option, you have to replenish it continuously.
Stress-related illness
One of the significant causes of stress that leads to absenteeism, loss of productivity and related health care occurs every month. The stress associated with payroll is astronomical. A manual payroll process can take anything up to four days, often including weekends. You can significantly cut this cost, and the stress it causes if you switch to an automated time and attendance solution.
What features must your time and attendance solutions have?
People Analytics
People analytics, using insights from colleague data to inform decision making, is an essential element of modern HR teams. People analytics has the potential to drive business strategy, improve performance and enhance your team’s experience. In today’s business environment people analytics can provide insight and help your organisation to determine where to locate a new office, redesign a workplace, evaluate mergers and acquisitions and gain a competitive edge. Your time and attendance solution must have a robust analytics solution so that you can leverage the data and information to make effective and sound business decisions.
Award interpretation
An individuals’ job classification determines wages. These levels might be the result of training, time, education, responsibility, competency, supervision or a combination of the above. The award level and correct classification are essential. Incorrect classification can lead to overpayments, underpayments and civil penalties. Take organisations like the Commonwealth Bank, Qantas, and more recently, Woolworths, for example, who were found to be underpaying their workers. They are now enduring significant financial liabilities causing David Jones and Metcash to undertake audits to double-check their systems. Wage theft, unfortunately, can be an issue among corporates. However, there is no question, using tech will make things easier for your company to avoid a human error that may result in underpaying your team. You are no longer limited to old, unwieldy methods of complying with various laws. By having an up to date automation software, you can keep accurate records, monitor time and attendance while tracking staff rosters, and applying modern awards. Your time and attendance solution must have a sound award interpretation module.
Payroll integration
It makes sense to use technology in HR and Payroll functions. Not only does it help your teams to complete their tasks, but it can also turn your high-risk business into a low-risk one. Additional reasons why you should incorporate technology into your HR and Payroll functions include:
- Make your business less vulnerable
If you rely on an individual to handle all your payroll and HR tasks, you are at risk. There is also a risk of not being compliant with various laws, mainly if the individual is not well versed in the law. The alternative is to run a technology solution in the form of a managed payroll service. With the incorporation of up-to-date technology in this service, you immediately make your business less vulnerable.
- Easy access to Payroll Data is essential in making business decisions
It might not be obvious, but payroll data can help you improve and run your business. You can motivate your teams if you have the right insight from data. It will help you develop a better working environment, discover high absenteeism or gain insight into reasons for sick leave taken by people. If you have this data at your fingertips, you can get to the core of deeper issues within your company, resulting in you running your business more efficiently.
- Employees expect updated technology
People are surrounded by technology daily. If you run an old system, you might find it hard to attract highly skilled individuals. Consider automation of your payroll. It’ll deliver data like how much paid time off a person has available. With an old system that simple request can take forever to answer.
- Payroll can become an added value to your company
Payroll can be an annoying part of the business. It takes time and money you could spend productively somewhere else. An automated payroll will free up time and keep management and staff informed and productive.
- Technology can reduce the stress associated with payroll
Take a minute to examine your office during payroll time, and you will see how much pressure it carries. Constant changes in peoples pay, relevant legislation and regulations that affect the company all contribute to this stress. An automated system will help you maintain this data through report networks and robust interfaces. It reduces your exposure and gives you peace of mind.
The benefits of time and attendance solutions
Simplify payroll
Old systems require your team members to fill in timesheets. Your managers must then decipher poor handwriting and enter the data into a payroll system for processing. Thus, often leading to mistakes in compensation, time wasted and immense frustration. Time and attendance software enables your team to clock in and out digitally. The data is immediately available to anybody with authorisation, and you can easily integrate it with payroll software. The system calculates wages, vacation, sick leave, overtime, holiday pay and variations automatically.
Prevent tax and benefit problems
Time and attendance software in conjunction with a payroll system reduces errors in filing taxes. There are many benefits incorporated into the number of hours people work and having an automated system will ensure the correct calculation of vacation and added time off.
Go mobile
In the modern workplace, people usually work remotely and travel often. Technology allows you to view a worker’s productivity from anywhere – home, office or coffee shop.
Reduce paper usage
All-time and payroll data can be stored in the cloud, making it easily accessible via mobile devices or computers.
Increase employee satisfaction
Time and attendance software are user-friendly. Your team benefits from the accurate calculation of their compensation, leave and vacation time.
If you need a partner in technology that can advise you on time and attendance technology, speak to a Tambla Time and Attendance expert today. We can significantly improve your data accuracy and payroll efficiency while providing real-time access for your managers and leaders to monitor attendance.
